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Sunday, 7 April 2013

C = Cuss Words

Few think me as snobbish, few call it my ‘nautanki’, and
rest terms it as my arrogance. Why???...I am just not tolerant to Cuss
words…not even used in casual way. Any kind of bad language is a turn off for
me.

Being brought up in a small city of Uttar Pradesh – where
the local dialect is incomplete without a ‘gaali’, my household has always been
kept aloof of these words. Even the innocent word like ‘Saala’ was never heard
there. Somehow, I cannot enjoy ‘potty or fart jokes’ till now. For the same
reason, I found it rather distasteful dialogue while everyone else whistled on
it when Salman Khan boisterously claimed to pierce the villain multiple times
while confusing him!!

I try to maintain the same environment for my daughter as
well. Initially, just after our marriage I expressed my discomfort in any of
these ‘filler’ slangs sometimes used by SG. And, he took note of it. He has
eradicated all those words from his lingo now.

When I see many people who are unfortunately parent as well
using this kind of language even when their kids are around, I feel really pity
for those children I had kind of argument with one of my friend about this when
she blamed me of being too much protective about my kid regarding this matter.
My logic was that I would never try to shield her from the exposure of these
words but would want her to understand the reasons of not using them. But, this
is going to be one tricky task. I wonder how in near future I can teach my kid about the better 'choice of words' when the whole society is getting more tolerable to this lingo. I
blogged about it a

year back that how ‘double meaning’ words are creepily getting tucked in our day to day language and we are getting gradually comfortable with it. I am sure many people would find most of these terms quite okay and might think me as ‘human fossil’ but my notions of parenting are crystal clear to me. My dislike for cuss words would continue.

6 comments:

Loved this! Even I used to cringe at cuss words. But nowadays, these words have (sadly) become a part of the vocabulary. So much so that I don't even notice that it has been used by others. Shielding kids is going to be very difficult, and giving reasons, good enough for them to understand and accept is a challenging task.

I think I can understand where you are coming from, and I am the same around the children. But it is not possible to control in all situations, such as when watching a movie together on TV! In such cases, we just explain to them that these are not to be used, and move on.However, I do agree with Sirisha's comment above too, and am a bit more flexible in adult conversations :).

Rightly written. I can't help cringing when I hear such words. It has always been that way for me. I can never adapt to it as the society had over time. When it comes to kids, the task is to let them know but also bringing them up in a way that they would not prefer them. I feel it is better that kids know the existence of such and such a lingo and the reasons why they should not be adapting it from parents rather than them learning from a 3rd person and thinking it is really okay to use it. But as you said, it sure is a tricky task!

very true N.. Every movie dialogue had double meaning dialogue these days. Not to mention heroes abusing, which is now like the trend-setter. With things this rate, kids would pick it up and we can do nothing about it.

I used use a lot of Gaalis, but never in front of kids :D ...But when i decided to become a lecturer, i decided to tone down the language. And after having Zini around i have done some serious language censorship :)